What is On Jeffs' Mind

Lately I have been going through a bit of a roller coaster with live. Nothing Major, just those little bumps along the way

Firstly, I have been a bit disappointed that I have not been able to do anything with my collecting podcast for quite some time. It was never my intention to have such a delay with it. Back in the spring/summer I ordered a new mixer. As my old mixer was not compatible with Windows Vista, and could only record in Mono. So I got a new mixer, and I felt that I would be able to record my podcasts in stereo. Unfortunately it to would only work in Mono. I spent months and months trying to troubleshoot why it would not work. I finally was able to build up an old PC with Windows XP, but still I could not get it working in stereo. I had a talk with my good friend Rick, and we came to the conclusion that the mixer was defective. I sent a support request to the manufacturer about this, but have only got one email stating they are behind on support calls. I am not very hopeful that I am going to get any resolution on this, since I have had the mixer for quite some time now. I really don’t want to move with my podcast until I can do it in stereo. It is sort of a pride thing with me, in that I would like to do it to the best I can, and to release a mono podcast just does not sit well with me. So at this moment I really do not know when I will be able to record again. I will most likely have to buy a new mixer, so I will have to save up money for that. I will probably have to research what one will work for me, and something with a reasonable price. I am a bit bummed as the one I have right now, I actually think I would really like, but I just feel if I do not get any acknowledgment from the company that made this, that I really cannot buy any more of their products.

The other day I was checking my blog, and found that some web pages were replaced. I was able to get the pages fixed, but concerned how this happened. I contacted the service provider, but sadly they said there was nothing they could do. A little bit more investigation, and I had found that someone had actually gotten into my site as my password no longer worked and there were a lot of spam posts on the blog. I was able to get my password reset, and get my blog fixed. I am going to have to look at some additional security for my site, so that it can be as secure as possible. I have to admit, it has gotten me down a bit, as I do not like when things like this happen, just sort of shakes me at my core.

I read some bad news about Indycar yesterday. One of my favorite teams Newman Haas racing is shutting down their Indycar program. Teams come and go, but Newman Haas has been in Indycar for nearly 30 years, and for my entire time watching Indycar, they were always in it. They have had some real great drivers race for them in the past, and for years they were the Gold Standard for teams. I also really respected them as when the split between CART and the IRL occurred years ago, Newman Haas stayed loyal to CART/Champcar. So in all the years I have followed Indycar racing, they were a constant, and I have watched no other team longer then I have watched them. Thanks for the memories Newman Haas Racing.

Some good new, I ordered another astromech for my collection the other day, and got notice that it shipped today. So that was a bit of good news that put a smile on my face

Tags: Astromech, Down, IndyCar, Mixer, Newman Haas, Up

I wanted to think of a witty title for this post, but alas, I could not, so I leave it up to the reader to make one up.

A few updates in regards to some web projects I am working on

First off, I have released another episode for my collecting podcast Jedijeff’s Basement. This is the 4th one, and I am hoping that now I will be on a regular monthly schedule for releasing these. In this episode (or podcast, whatever you prefer) I review a toy I have had for a few years, the Robot B-9 from the Original Lost in Space series. I had this since 1997, and I had never taken it out of the box, so to cover it properly, I had to will myself to take it out of the box, and that took a bit of effort . Also I review the LOST Encyclopedia, which was published last year. To learn more, check them out at my JediJeff’s Basement site.

Yesterday, Jason and I recorded our first podcast for the 2011 Formula 1 and Indycar season. We covered the Australian GP for F1 and the Indycar race in St. Pete. Both races were sort of your typical season openers. In Indycar, there seemed to be a lot of carnage as the drivers came to grips with the new double file restarts, well in Formula 1, the teams were getting adapted to the new tech changes, with KERS, DRS and the new Pirelli tires. The new podcast should be up in the next day or so, and you can check it out at Champodcast.

Today I sort of had a productive day on eBay, as I made a few purchases. First off, I had been looking for another Astromech droid R7 A7, and after some looking around locally, decided that it was time to go to eBay. Fortunately there were plenty of listings for it, so finding one at a price I liked was not hard. So with some luck, it should be hear in a few weeks. I also started looking for items to build up my stock for next years toy show. I have cleared out the items from my collection I no longer wanted, and now I want to give a try at selling for profit. So I spent a few hours today looking for things that I felt I might be able to get for cheap, and sell for a profit. I made a few interesting purchases, and have a few other auctions I am waiting on. I am going to give it a try and see how it goes, I am not expecting to make a lot of money, but I want to see if I can make a little bit of money, at least enough to pay for some of my own collecting.

It is nice to know the spring looks to have arrived, today I went for a walk, and the weather was nice. The only down fall was that it is wet and muddy outside, and the road I was walking on, there was some large puddles. It was a bit of a challenge to make sure I did not get hit by water, and I sort of got my best shows muddy. I probably should have thought it out a bit better.

Tags: Champodcast, Formula 1, IndyCar, jedijeffs basement, LOST, Lost in Space, Spring

Today was a productive day on the computer for me. I spent some time working on my websites, I always get satisfaction out of working on them. First thing this morning, I was able to make some updates to my friends over at the Anomaly Podcasts new site. It was a bit of a challenge, but using Google Chrome inspect element tool, I was able to locate the code I needed to change. I have been feeling pretty good, as I am able to understand more and more php and CSS sheets and what they are doing, and how to change them around to get the results I want. One day I would like to be able to create my own, but for now, I am pretty happy with being able to modify what has been done, and understanding what they do.

Next up I spent some time upgrading the versions of my WordPress sites to the latest 3.1 version. I was a bit nervous at the start as I was not sure how it would interact with the plugins and themes I have installed, but looks like it went in alright and no issues. I think I was most worried about the gallery on my main site  here, as in the past I have done upgrades and it stopped working. After I was done doing upgrades to the sites, I upgraded both Google Chrome and Firefox to the latest versions of the browsers. Will take some getting used to with Firefox 4, but I think I might start to use Google Chrome more. Last week I upgraded Internet Explorer to version 9, so that it was current as well. I have not really used ie9 much, but at least my collecting site looks a bit better then it did before, but still the gallery pictures do not display properly. That is sort of disappointing, as I would like that my sites behave the same regardless of browser. As I work with my sites more, I will work towards maybe identifying which browser is being used, and what loads and what does not. But I still have a long ways to go before I can figure that out.

After I was done with my websites for a bit, I did some work in my basement. I put away the items I did not sell at least weeks toy show, and rebuilt the shelf I had taken with me to the show. After I was done that, I worked on taking some pictures of the collectible I will do for my next collecting podcast. I have been delayed on that, as I was sick for the past few weeks, and that set me back unfortunately. Hopefully I will have the podcast done in the next week or so, as I want to get to a regular schedule. Tonight I will probably work on taking some more pictures to prepare for the podcast. I seem to be getting my Photoshop skills better as well, as I was able to modify the pictures after more efficiently. That will help me in the future with getting the podcast out faster.

A few non computer notes

Good news, my favorite show for this year has been renewed for a 4th season. It was announced at the end of the week, that Fringe will be back for another season. I have to say that makes me very happy, as the story line this year has been great. I am not sure how I would have felt if it got cancelled, and left with an unresolved story. I think also, I am happy as in terms of first run Sci-Fi shows, I am sort of running out of shows to watch. I record a lot of shows, but only a few are Sci-Fi based ones, so the thought of no Sci-Fi shows is not one I really want to think of. So regardless, great news for Fringe, looking forward to the season finale this year, as I get the feeling it is building up to something pretty cool.

The racing season for me starts this weekend. Both Formula 1 and Indycar are starting their seasons on Sunday. F1 is in Australia this weekend after the Bahrain race was postponed due to all the problems in the country. I have to say I am sort of happy they are starting in Australia, as it feels more right to me. It will be interesting to see if Red Bull can repeat all the success they had last year, or if Ferrari or McLaren will knock them off. From the first qualifying, looks like Red Bull is still fast, with Sebastian Vettel getting the pole, but my favorite Lewis Hamilton is right behind. Will also be interesting to see how the Teams handle the KERS that was reintroduced this season, also the new Pirelli tires and how the teams adapt to them. Also F1 has brought back the 107 percent rule, and looks like HRT was the first victim, as they were not fast enough to qualify for the race. I guess that will force that team to get faster, or it will hasten their demise and if they miss a few races, might just fold. Hopefully it does not come to that, but I guess we will see.

On this side of the world, Indycar is starting up at St. Pete.  Hoping for a good race tomorrow, and looks like Will Power has picked up where he left off with taking the pole for that race. I am also very interested to see how Sebastien Bourdais does, he is back in the series and racing for Coyne. Not a very good qualifying today, so hopefully Bourdais can show more in the race. Definitely will be pulling for Bourdais to do well, as it would be nice to see, after all his success in Champcar. I have to admit, I am not really really excited about this years Indycar season. I am sort of just wanting them to get to the new engine and chassis for 2012, so I think I might find 2011 long at times, as I am really not excited at all about the current Indycar specs. Jason and I will be back this year for more Champodcasts, and hoping it will be a good year. Last year we sort of fell off our schedule, but this year, I think we will commit ourselves to putting out the podcasts on a more regular schedule.

Tags: Anomaly Podcast, Champodcast, Formula 1, Fringe, IndyCar, Jason, jedijeffs basement

Over the weekend, I was at the annual Edmonton Indycar race,  and had a great time. The weather this year was pretty decent, maybe a little to sunny for my liking, since I sunburn easy, but the temperatures were pretty manageable. In the past, some of the weekends have been very hot, with temperatures in the mid to high 30′s, but this year, saturday was the hot day in the high 20′s, and the other two days were mid 20′s.

They had changed the grandstand layout this year. Due to the promoter Northlands cutting back on expenses, they did away with our turn one grandstand, and replaced it with additional RV parking. I will say, I was disappointed, as I really liked watching the race from that area. Our new grandstand was behind the pits, and we had a good view of the middle of the track, but I would prefer to be on a corner where some action happens. Some new promoters will be taking over the race next year, so not sure what they will do in regards to grandstand configuration, but hopefully maybe we get a chance to move to one in a corner. The RV parking bugs me as well, since that area of the track is blocked off to everyone except the RV owners. That is the section of the road course, and in the past we would go down and watch the cars in the practices, now we cant do that. I think it is short sited, and can see it is only a business decision. I could see where people who buy a general admission ticket, would not see the value in continuing, since there seems to be so few places to watch the race without a gransdtand seat.

I have never really cared for how Northlands have run this event, as each year, the off track entertainment seems to get less and less each year. I am hoping with the new promoters, that the party atmosphere comes back. I suspect Northlands figures since this runs the same time as CapitolEx, that is people want a fun atmosphere, they will go there, but since I don’t plan to, I miss out on what we had in the past. The food selection in thin as well, with not much to really choose from. You have your Hotdogs,  Hamburgers and Pizza, but not much else. A few specialized booths, but for the most part, the food selection is limited. As expected, the food prices are expensive, which I would be fine with, if there was more selection. But I can see, where bringing a family to this, would be a major outlay of money. As a simple hotdog and drink is going to cost around 10 dollars, so not family/budget friendly pricing.

I have always been and will be a big Champcar fan, so it has been hard to accept this new Indycar series, as the cars are inferior to the Champcar. One more year of the current configuration of car, and then they will go back to a Turbocharged car, and a chassis that is more suited to a variety of tracks, and not just Ovals. I am not really digging the proposed chassis, but hoping that the car will be more racy on tracks like Edmonton. I guess when I actually see one, I will have a better idea on how I feel. The current form of Indycar does nothing for me, we go through the paddocks, which is cool, but the cars are ugly to my eye, and underwhelming since they are 3 seconds slower on this track then the Champcar. But I was happy to see, with the new Indycar branding, and the IRL branding going out the door, that all the garish IRL tradmarks and branding are gone from around the track. I guess being a Champcar fan, I found the branding to be more appealing, and this new Indycar branding seems to be a step in that direction.

The race was alright, some controversy at the end, with Helio Castroneves being black flagged at the end of the race, and a surprise winner in Scott Dixon. Will Power had been pretty dominate in the race, but had lost the lead to Helio Castroneves a little earlier, and was blocked by Castroneves when attempting to pass. At the end of the race, Castroneves stormed the flag stand in anger, and provided some post race fireworks. Paul Tracy had a good run for the day, finishing in 6th, after starting so deep in the field. But watching this race, it really showed how much faster the Penske and Ganassi cars were over the rest of the field. Hopefully with the new Chassis, it will level the playing field out a bit more in the future. Simona Di Silvestro had a good qualifying, but unfortunately got bumped, and then problems with the car later on, but she looked very quick, and if not for the problems, would have had a good finish.

The Indy Lites race was alright, a bit of a parade at times, and only a handful of cars. We skipped the Canadian Tire race, as it seems like the same old same old each year, and without Andrew Ranger in the field,  we were not interested. I guess from that standpoint, we are casual fans, as we only seem to watch if certain people are in the race. The day before they had the Northern Alberta sports car race, it was fun to watch, and saw some good drives by a few.

I have some to the conclusion during the weekend, that at some point it would be nice to be a person who can go into restricted areas around the track. At times, it felt, like me the race ticket buying fan, that I help pay for this event, but a lot of times I am spending time looking at more privileged people from behind a fence. A race event is really a dichotomy of a class system, as there are areas for VIP’s that the rest can only watch from afar. Companies the sponsor cars or the series, seem to have people who get some pretty nice access to different areas of the track. I was watching the Pit lane from behind a fence, and noticed a bunch of people strolling up and down the lane. But for the common fan, you can buy a pit access pass, but it really in not pit access, as you are behind a fence, really on a few feet in front of the rest of the general public. To me, that access is a sham to sell, as they sell it as pit access, but it is not, but there are still non race team people strolling up and down the real pit lane. Maybe someday I can go to a race, and be able to walk into theses fenced off areas. But sadly to me, I notice more and more each year all the places that is restricted to me, and some of those places offer a good view of the track, and their is less for the person who actually buys a ticket.

Fun weekend, looking forward to next year, hopefully it will be better

Tags: Champ car, Edmonton Honda Indy, IndyCar